"Your astonishing letter, family duties, will never mention Katie's name as long as I live" Read the full letter
Letter Reference | Olive Schreiner: Extracts of Letters to Cronwright-Schreiner MSC 26/2.16/10 |
Archive | National Library of South Africa, Special Collections, Cape Town |
Epistolary Type | Extract |
Letter Date | 4 July 1896 |
Address From | The Homestead, Kimberley, Northern Cape |
Address To | Cradock, Eastern Cape |
Who To | S.C. (‘Cron’) Cronwright-Schreiner |
Other Versions | |
Permissions | Please read before using or citing this transcription |
Legend |
The Project is grateful to the National Library of South Africa (NLSA), Cape Town, for kindly allowing us to transcribe this Olive Schreiner extract, which is part of its Special Collections. This extract was produced by Cronwright-Schreiner using original letters when he was preparing The Life... (1924) and The Letters of Olive Schreiner (1924). With a few exceptions, the original letters in his possession were then destroyed. However, when Olive Schreiner's originals can be compared, this shows his extracts to be severely shortened, and/or inaccurate in sometimes minor but sometimes major respects, while their frequent multiple dates (eg. 8-15 August) indicate that he often combined a number of original letters, among other bowdlerisations and intrusions as well as deletions. Consequently the status of the Cronwright-Schreiner Extracts, of which this is one, is that they are artefacts of his editorial practices, rather than being ‘Olive Schreiner letters’ as such. They are provided for the sake of completeness, because they give clues as to where Schreiner was resident at different points in time, and indicate some of her activities. However, they should be read and used with considerable caution for the reasons spelled out here. Cronwright-Schreiner has written the date, where it was sent from and the place it was sent to onto this extract.
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…Hope good meeting…
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3 Mill is sleeping behind the stove & I’ve lighted your lamp on your
4table to make believe you are here… I’m going to read Decline &
5Fall but even that I don’t like much to-night…
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2
3 Mill is sleeping behind the stove & I’ve lighted your lamp on your
4table to make believe you are here… I’m going to read Decline &
5Fall but even that I don’t like much to-night…
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